Galvin, Patrick

(1927- )

   Galvin was born in Cork, though there is some doubt about his exact date of birth. Apparently his mother changed the date on his birth certificate so he could more easily find work. His early education was by the Christian Brothers and three years in prison in a reformatory outside Cork. His plays have been produced in Dublin, Belfast and London, and he lectured on Irish folk music, including in Eastern Germany. In the 1970s, through a Leverhulme Fellowship in Drama, many of his plays were staged at the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast. His three-part autobiography The Raggy Boy Trilogy was published in 2002. Song for a Raggy Boy (part of the trilogy) was filmed in 2003, starring Aidan Quinn. He wrote Irish Songs of Resistance: 1169-1923 (1962) and has recorded several collections of Irish ballads. Although he worked mainly with the ballad tradition, his poetry portrays his left-wing politics. Some of his poems: "My Father Spoke with Swans," "Plaisir d'Amour," "The Death of Art O'Leary," "The Madwoman of Cork," "Your Grave Disfigures Me."

   Sources: Bitter Harvest: An Anthology of Contemporary Irish Verse. John Montague, ed. Scribner's, 1989. Biography of Patrick Galvin (http://www.irishwriters-online.com/ patrickgalvin.html). Patrick Galvin: An Inventory of His Papers at the Burns Library, Boston College, Massachusetts (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ulib/Burns/galvinb.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).